With many parts of the UK facing sub-zero temperatures, weather presenters have come in for viewer-criticism over subjective measurements marring their forecasts. But phrases like ‘turn the central heating up a notch’ and ‘keep that ice-scraper handy’ or ‘you’ll be fucking frozen at the bus stop’ DO have a solid scientific basis, says the Met Office.

‘Obviously, we’re obliged to present the weather in layman’s English,’ a pregnant Met Office spokeswoman told a select committee, ‘the science is way beyond us.’ The spokeswoman went on to mention the Met Office’s recent spending of a cool £2m to measure the ‘misery factor’ caused by endless snow warnings and un-gritted side-roads. ‘The results of that survey were fed into a complex algorithm which converts temperatures measured in degrees Celsius to the new Feels Like scale,’ the committee heard, ‘which starts at -6 FL, thus fuelling the Misery Factor a bit more.’

Records for the new Feels Like scale began yesterday. ‘At least that’s something,’ said the committee chairman, making a careful note of the date, ‘usually, nobody knows when records began.’ Recycling the Misery Factor through the algorithm means that the Feel Like temperatures can plummet to extremes. ‘Already, we’ve had some of the coldest FL temperatures forecast since records began,’ said the Met Office.